Add Barry to box-set binge list
IS the traditional way we used to watch TV gone forever? With the rise of the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, it’s no longer unusual to get an entire series drop into your lap in one fell swoop.
I know we live in a hyper-fast culture and people have less patience than before, but I never realised that we had all become so used to instant gratification that even waiting a week for the next episode of your favourite show was some sort of unfair, onerous burden.
Yet ever since I sat down and watched the 10 episodes of Making A Murderer over the course of a day and half, I’ve become a sucker for the whole box-set binge concept.
In the ever-escalating arms race between traditional TV channels and the newer platforms, channels like Sky now have excellent catch-up facilities thatenableyoutowaituntil a show is nearly over before you decide to check them out. That has certainly been the case with Barry (SkyOn Demand).
Starring the always-great Bill Hader, Barry is an unusual sort of show.
Hader plays the eponymous anti-hero, a former soldier who realised after his tour in Afghanistan that the only thing he was good at was killing people.
So, under the tutelage of his uncle (played by Stephen Root, whom you’d probably recognise as Milton from
Office Space) he has become an assassin, although he kills only bad guys.
He also suffers from a bit of a mid-life crisis.
After botching a hit in LA and enraging some thoroughly odd Chechen gangsters, he ends up in an acting class run by Henry Winkler and tries to figure out where his life is going.
It’s obsidian dark, as you might expect from the subject matter, but Hader is probably the most likeable hit man since John Cusack whacked his way through
Grosse Pointe Blank and Barry contains some genuinely uproariously funny moments – although thebitwiththeteethinthe second episode might freak some people out.
It certainly freaked me out.
If you’re looking for a box-set binge this weekend,
Barry istheonetopick. It’s smart, sharply written and brilliantly acted as you would expect from a cast that boasts Hader, Root and Winkler...
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